ThaiBirding Blog: 18FEB17: Thailand Day 3 - Petchaburi Area

I don't even remember driving from the dump to Pak Thale. Things were going down hill pretty fast. We arrived at Pak Thale and I almost stayed in the car. I was not feeling well at all. Na offered to carry my scope and tripod to the salt pans where there were shorebirds - about 1/2 mile away. It was about 0930, hot, humid, and I had a fever. This was, though, the place to see Spoon-billed Sandpiper. We ran into a couple of folks returning from the pan and they reported that it was the furthest impoundment and that they had 5 Spoon-billeds in there. We made our way to it and thankfully, there was a little shack that offered some shade. We were looking into the sun at a ton of sleeping shorebirds..... great. You see, I hate viewing birds like that but Rick, he's bionic. He can look into the sun, through the sun, over the sun, whatever, nothing deters him. This would be a recurring theme of Rick setting up his scope AND finding birds while looking into the sun. I had to get used to it.... :-)

We couldn't locate jack. We were there about 1/2 hour when I finally glimpsed a Spoon-bill come out of its resting position and preen a little. I said "Spoon-billed" in a rather weak, non excited voice. We all got on it and that's when Bob said, "the first one you saw you were yelling and jumping up and down, this one, you were a little mellow." 55555 I was sick man! We decided that we would try to get better light on it so we moved to our left to get the sun to our backs. Not 10 feet into moving and yours truly steps on a piece of tin roofing, it makes a crap load of noise, the birds flushed. I felt like an idiot. We bailed on the peep and walked down towards a spot where we could try for Far Eastern Curlew.

While we were walking, this absolute wall of large shorebirds - measuring in the thousands - got up and started to swirl around. We were looking for a FECU in the mass. I had my camera on my tripod so instead of trying to pick one out, I just started shooting the whole flock in flight ala alcids. Rick got on one and I was able to get it into my view finder and get some pics of it. Later, much later, I would review these pictures and there weren't just one FECU in with them, but 7. I pieced together a shooting sequence like I do the alcids at Race Point and was able to come to the conclusion of 7. I have included that montage and a few others below.

Seven (7) Far Eastern Curlew

A wall of Eurasian Curlew

Eurasian Curlew

Far Eastern Curlew alighting

Far Eastern Curlew Rick got us on

On our way out, we stopped in the Pak Thale Bird and Nature Center. We ran into a Brit who filled us in on the goings on with the salt farms and the estimated number of "Spoonies" in the area. In short, this group of salt farms in under pressure for development into another thing NOT a salt farm. No salt farm, no readily view-able Spoon-billed Sandpiper. He told us that for only $150k, this area could be preserved for the Spoonies. I don't have that cash but I know some who are out there do. There are 200 of these precious peep left in the world, if you got gobs of money (hint Nuttall), do some good.